Manly Tips 5: Internet Dating

December 9, 2009

I’ve never tried Internet dating. Actually, I’ve never asked a woman on a date. I have always just let them come to me. You may think this is due to shyness or nerdly anxiety, but it’s really just my bulgingly potent manliness. Or maybe the first thing.

To explore the topic of Internet Dating, I turned to an old friend of mine, Molson Muscle Marco. He’s a pro when it comes to wooing the opposite sex, and was one of the first people I ever knew who tried online dating. Actually, he might have tried that chatline dating they had before the Internet, come to think of it.

To fully understand this story, you have to know that a third friend, the Weekender, plays a role. Shall we begin?

Molson Muscle Marco made a date with a woman online. They emailed back and forth, and then chatted on the phone, and she sounded very nice. They agreed to go for dinner at a line-dancing bar (because it was the 1990s in Ontario) and Marco agreed to pick her up at her place.

He pulled up in his classic 1987 Mustang and rang the bell. She answered the door and, to Marco’s dismay, did not look like the photo she had posted on her dating site. He described her appearance as “Flintstoney,” and he didn’t mean Wilma. But he is a decent manly man, and he looks beyond looks, so he went inside when she asked him in for a drink before they left. Marco went inside, and noticed hundreds of pictures of soap opera characters on the wall, and the distinct smell of cat pee. Marco, a cat owner himself, liked that.

“You have a cat?” he asked.

“No,” she replied.

She poured a can of Orange Crush into a dirty glass and sat too close to him on the sofa. They made small talk, chatting about people they knew, and up came the name of the Weekender. Fred The date said “You know that guy? I met him on the dating website, too!”

Now, when Marco got to this part of the story, we all paid attention, because the Weekender is a legendary ladies man, a smooth operator, and most stories involving him tend to be interesting.

“Anyway,” the date continued while I was writing that last part, “He showed up, we were sitting here talking, and he said ‘I’m just going to go down and start the car to warm it up.’ And he left, and he never came back.”

Marco shook his head. “He’s an asshole,” he said. And he took the date to dinner, and they had a fine time. She talked through the entire meal, and explained how belching is a compliment to the chef, and demonstrated. Marco drove her home, and said he would call her, but never did.

I have always wondered which approach was better: lie and disappear, or grin and bear it. I look at the actions of my friends, and I’m still confused, because at the time, they both had really excellent moustaches.